


no nights in outer space

by choomchoom



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Gen, Science, hints at canon trauma but softe, ship tags are pre-relationship, sleep deprivation (it's all their own fault)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25530190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choomchoom/pseuds/choomchoom
Summary: Literally no one has a proper sleep schedule during the space road trip. Together, they manage.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Entrapta (She-Ra)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 119





	no nights in outer space

Not long after they’d gotten back from the crystal planet, Bow had found Glimmer sound asleep across the flat ledge atop the ship’s control panel, the blanket from her bunk clutched in her arms. She’d rolled over and nearly fallen off the small surface when Bow rubbed her shoulder to wake her up, and would have had a painful crash to the ground if he hadn’t caught her first. 

She’d tried to go to bed because she hadn't slept since Horde Prime’s ship, and she’d been exhausted, despite or because of the fact that night and day weren’t really a thing for Horde Prime and the clones. She’d slept basically whenever she’d wanted to, when she was there, but she’d also noticed the circles under Catra’s growing deeper and darker as time went on. Horde Prime keeping Glimmer stuck in a cell had almost felt like a privilege, towards the end. 

Still, she’d been tired, and then the walls of the bunkroom had seemed to close in on her, cold metal threatening to swallow her whole. She’d told Bow after, still in his arms, the truth - that she’d hoped it would be a little bit better if she could see the sky. 

Bow had understood, and even insisted on dragging a mattress from one of the bunkrooms into the bridge area so that Glimmer would have somewhere nicer to sleep than the precarious ledge next to the window. 

It takes a few days after that for her to notice that Bow is hardly sleeping at all. He has a bag next to one of the bunks in the room they’re all ostensibly sharing, and Glimmer has seen him use it all of once. Now, when she walks onto the bridge, she finds him slumped and snoring in the captain’s chair. 

She walks over to him. He still doesn’t wake up as she assesses him, relaxed despite the painful-looking angle of his neck, eyelashes fluttering slightly against his cheeks. “Bow,” she says when she finally snaps herself out of staring at him.

He jerks awake immediately, arms floundering until he finds his bow and quiver next to the chair. “Wha - whazzit?” 

Glimmer walks over and wraps an arm around him, pulling him against her side into less of a slumped position. His head rests against the side of her chest, and something inside Glimmer melts at the familiar and much-missed show of comfort and trust. “That doesn’t look like a comfortable place to sleep.” 

“Wasn’t sleeping,” Bow says, yawning halfway through it. 

“Sure,” Glimmer says. “But you're obviously tired. And I have a perfectly good bed just across the room.” She tries, gently, to pull him to his feet. 

He resists, yawning again. “Wish we could teleport.” 

“Me too,” Glimmer says. She flicks him lightly in the shoulder. “Get up.” 

This time, he does. She has to adjust her arm to keep him from slipping away, and they make their way a little awkwardly across the floor together. Soon enough, Glimmer is settling him down onto the mattress and pulling the blanket over both of them. 

There’s no way for them to be on a mattress this small together without touching, which is something that Glimmer hasn’t exactly thought through. Bow doesn’t seem to mind, though, and Glimmer finds that she doesn’t either. She falls asleep thinking about the warmth of all the places their limbs are intertwined. 

When she wakes up, Adora is there, curled up on top of her own blanket next to the mattress. Once, Glimmer would have pointed out how silly this was. They have perfectly serviceable beds about a one-minute walk away. But she doesn’t say anything. If this is what’s going to work, this is what they’re going to do. 

She closes her eyes again. She’s not tired, but there’s no place she’d rather be than here.

* * *

Catra jerks awake, claws out, the instant Entrapta pokes at her cheek with the end of a ponytail. She recoils it quickly enough to keep it from being shredded, and is left with Catra sitting in front of her, shoulders hunched, leaning back against the wall as if she could disappear into it (unfortunately, Darla doesn’t have any secret doors in the walls. Entrapta’s checked). 

“I don’t mind if you sleep in here,” Entrapta says. “But could you move a little to the left? You’re blocking an electrical outlet.”

Catra stares at her for long enough that Entrapta wonders if she even heard her, then, slowly, she moves out of the way and curls back up on the floor. 

Entrapta goes about her business like usual, but when it comes time to test the new proximity alarm system she’s been wiring together, she pauses. That would be loud enough to wake Catra, and there’s plenty of other things to be done. 

She doesn’t notice when Catra leaves, too focused on fiddling with a broken sensor system that she thinks was originally built to detect magic. 

A few days later, Entrapta falls asleep at the workstation in the engine room, and when she wakes up, she finds herself covered with a blanket and the lights dimmed but not off, just the way she prefers. 

When she checks the security footage, she isn’t surprised to see Catra walking in and starting to speak, then stopping when she sees Entrapta asleep at the desk. She dims the lights, and sneaks soundlessly back a minute later with the blanket, and leaves. 

Scorpia had always said that the three of them were all friends, and Catra had always insisted that they weren’t. Entrapta had never been certain either way, and it had been delightful to analyze and find patterns in the data - she’d figured out early on that Catra tended to be nicer to Entrapta when she wanted something from her, which, if Entrapta’s understanding of social interaction is correct, indicated that Catra was not her friend. But Catra had also listened, really listened to her and even asked her questions, the way no one else before Hordak ever had. She had tried to keep Entrapta away from Hordak, at the beginning, because she’d thought Hordak was unsafe. She’d visited Entrapta in her lab, asking for updates, far more frequently than was necessary. 

And of course, she’d attacked Entrapta and sent her to Beast Island. Overall, the data was inconclusive. 

The footage, though, shows Catra being nice to Entrapta even when there’s nothing she could possibly gain from it. 

One encounter, of course, isn’t statistically significant. But it’s possible that it indicates the start of a new trend. Entrapta will just have to keep collecting the data. 

* * *

Adora’s eyes have glazed over completely by the time Catra walks into the bunkroom. Entrapta had wanted her to read a technical manual she’d found about the ship’s engines and translate it for her, but Adora doesn’t even know half these words in Etherian, so mostly she’s just been staring at it.

“Entrapta asked me to look for you,” Catra says, while Adora blinks swirling, unfamiliar First Ones symbols out of her vision. “Did you finish the manual?” 

Adora plops the booklet over her face. “No,” she says, muffled. 

Catra steps toward her and plucks the booklet up, assessing Adora. “When’s the last time you slept?” 

“Dunno. Entrapta wanted me to finish -”

“You’ve met Entrapta, right? She doesn’t need a stupid old manual. She’ll figure it out,” Catra says. 

Adora sighs and covers her face with her hands. “Yeah.” 

When Catra next speaks, her voice is soft, like they’re in their old bunkroom and she doesn’t want the cadets in the next bunk to overhear. “Would it help if -” She pauses, and Adora, used to Catra sometimes needing to take her time to say the things she means, waits. “If I stay?” 

“Yeah,” Adora says, not even needing to think about it. “It would.” 

Catra sits down gingerly at the end of the bed. Adora wonders if she’s also thinking about the nights that Catra had been away from their bunkroom for one reason or another - in the infirmary with an injury, in a holding cell after being caught with contraband, the one time Shadow Weaver had tried to have her transferred to another squad and the squad’s performance had dropped so badly that Shadow Weaver had grudgingly switched her back. Adora hadn’t been able to sleep much if at all, those nights, and Catra would tease her about the way she’d fall asleep before lights-out the night she got back. She would tease her, but she would stay with Adora, letting Adora keep hold of her hand in her sleep and be there when she woke up. 

Now, Catra scoots back to lean against the wall - a habit of hers that’s new to Adora, and she doesn’t know how to ask if she developed it as a Force Captain in the Horde or on Prime’s ship - and looks over at Adora. Adora takes off her jacket and relaxes to the sound of Catra’s breathing. It doesn’t take her long at all to fall asleep. 

When she wakes up, Catra is asleep, curled around Adora’s legs. Careful not to jostle her, Adora picks up the technical manual off the floor and resumes trying to read it. She doesn’t have anywhere she needs to be. She can stay, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> i SO badly want to see the detailed version of entrapta's friendship data charts


End file.
